The Great Experiment: race and authorship in Shonda Rhimes’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story

Abstract In 2023, Shonda Rhimes’s Queen Charlotte premiered on Netflix. The series is a prequel to the streamer’s hit series, Bridgerton (2020–present), itself an adaptation of Julia Quinn’s popular series of romance books. In Bridgerton’s colour-conscious British Regency setting, the marriage of Queen Charlotte, who is Black, and King George, who is white, led to the racial integration of elite society. Queen Charlotte, written and produced by Rhimes, gives the context for their love story. Although Rhimes is known for the diversity of her television shows, this series represents her most sustained engagement with issues of race. It is also her most personal work. The story of young Charlotte reflects Rhimes’s own, as a Black woman who rose to power within a white-dominant institution. Queen Charlotte understands race not primarily as identity or culture, but as a tool used by institutions to distribute power. While Bridgerton preserves the optimistic attitude of the romance novels, Queen Charlotte ends with more ambivalence, reflecting both the sincerity of its concerns and the sensibility of its creator.